


I Have a Box of Matches (They're All Lit)

by EudociaCovert



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Dark, Dark fic, Desperation, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 03:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EudociaCovert/pseuds/EudociaCovert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It involves no real feeling or passion. It's clinical. It's practical. It's cold. Like he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have a Box of Matches (They're All Lit)

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDAL THEMES. IF THIS IS A PROBLEM PLEASE DON'T READ.

He doesn't go for anything sharp, or loud, or bloody. He wonders a little bit if it's an aversion to pain, but in the end it's just because this isn't something emotional to him, it involves no real feeling or passion. It's clinical. It's practical. It's cold. Like he is.

He appropriates the first syringe from a passed out druggie on the street. It's a moment of opportunity, and he's always been good at seizing those. He's careful with it, never gets close to touching the needle. It's probably rife with disease and drug residue, but he doesn't clean it either. If he does end up using it, it won't matter what else gets in his system.

He thinks about it a lot while sitting in the back of an American classroom. Not because school's really that difficult for him, but because when his mind wanders this is where it goes. To an empty syringe in his room and a hard understanding of where he has drawn his line.

The drugs he smuggles out of the nurses office. It seems darker somehow than getting the syringe, stealing the drugs. It's thought out in a way the first object wasn't. He had planned to tell the nurse he had a migraine, but when it had come time to lie he had slipped into the mindset for it so quickly, so effortlessly, the thought _just like a mission_ and _I'm good at this_ had chased his lunch right up his throat and onto the white tile floor and he hadn't had to say anything at all.

He puts the medication and the syringe in a box and hides them in the ceiling beside the air vent above his bed.

And then he lives.

He laughs again, smiles truly, makes comments and judgments and remarks that make Sabrina giggle. He washes the dishes with Mrs. Pleasure and goes to baseball games with Mr. Pleasure. He makes friends, and joins sports, and graduates near the top of his class.

He trades out the needle for a newer one, the drugs for a more deadly blend every few months, when the opportunity strikes. He never gets caught.

He's there for Sabrina when her dad finally lands a story which lands him six feet under. He's there when Mrs. Pleasure remarries and divorces in the span of two months. He's there when one of his high school friends drives off the road and kills himself and his girlfriend.

He doesn't forget what he's gone through. He still screams awake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, breaks a girlfriend's arm when she grabs him from behind, wets the bed for months, brutally sabotages relationships with his inability to trust. But he doesn't touch the box when life gets hard because he's still living and that's not what it's there for. The box isn't meant to end his life, just to help him keep it.

He moves out of Mrs. Pleasure's house when he's twenty. He takes the box with him. He finds a quicker drug, one that will kill in a manner of minutes. Restocks, re-hides.

He gets a job. A dog. Makes more friends, does more things. He doesn't forget.

He's twenty-four when they come. They still wear black, still wear blank expressions on gray skin. Still speak in blackmail and threats hidden under velvet and oily smiles. They still want him, more of him than he has ever wanted to give.  
The agent runs a gloved finger over the framed picture of Sabrina's daughter on his kitchen counter and smiles. he says "she's a pretty little thing," in an a soft accented voice. Alex hasn't spoken with a British accent in years.

  
He nods at the agent, emotionless (it's not about emotion) and turns around. “Give me ten minutes to pack.”

He wonders at the fact they think they'll have him that easily again. It's a massive oversight, and it's almost funny, how much they'd forgotten they had taught him.

If there's one lesson Alex Rider had learned from MI6, it's to always be prepared.

Ten minutes. He closes his bedroom door behind him, and jams it with a chair.

He only needs five.


End file.
